Chapter 6: Learning & Adaptation Flashcards
Historically, how have behaviorists and ethologists differed in their study of learning?
Ethologists believes behavior is innate, instinctive. Behaviorist believe it is learned. Ethologist is more formal, a better way to study the behavior of animals.
How is the concept of adaptive significance tied to evolutionary theory?
Adaptive significance is the influence on an organism’s survival or reproduction. Behaviors with adaptive significance means the species is more likely to survive.
What is a fixed action pattern?
Something that the species pretty much always does.
What role does the environment play in personal and species adaptation?
The environment shapes our personal behavior. The biology also evolves through natural selection of behaviors in that environment.
What is habituation, and what is its adaptive significance?
By learning not to respond to familiar stimuli, an organism may conserve resources to pay attention to important stimuli. This is habituation.
Adaptive significance is how beneficial a trait is in regards to survival and reproduction.
How do you create a conditioned response (CR)?
You create a conditioned stimulus, by repeatedly pairing a condition stimulus with an unconditioned one until you get a CR.
Under what circumstances are CRs typically acquired most quickly?
Forward, short-delay conditioning appears to work best. CS is present along with UCS.
Explain the key factor in producing the extinction of a CR.
When the CS is presented without the UCS. (ie, bell ringing with no food).
Explain the adaptive significance of stimulus generalization and discrimination.
Stimulus generalization is when you respond to similar stimuli in the same way.
Discrimination is when you respond differently to stimuli.
The adaptive significance allows you to extrapolate current patterns to new events, perhaps allowing you to survive better.
How does higher-order conditioning create attraction toward neutral stimuli?
You’re not pairing the stimulus with something that naturally produces a response, rather with something that is condition to produce a response.
How does classical conditioning explain fear acquisition?
A neutral stimulus comes to evoke fear if its paired with an aversive stimulus. IE. buzzing you if you hit a lever
How is classical conditioning used in society to increase and decrease our arousal/attraction to stimuli?
Aversion therapy, pair bad thing with something they trying to quit
How can classical conditioning boost immune system functioning?
Give drug with some other stimulus; eventually only give stimulus; body acts as if drug was given.
What evidence led Thorndike to propose the “law of effect?”
Place cat in box; the cat eventually learns how to escape by trial and error instead of thinking things through.
What is operant conditioning? What is the difference between reinforcement and punishment?
operant condition is when animal operates environment to get what it wants and avoid what it doesn’t.
reinforcement and punishment are the consequences that affect the likelihood of a response under those conditions.
Identify two key differences between classical and operant conditioning.
operant happens after while pavlov happens before.
operant deals with voluntary behavior and classical deals with involuntary.
Why are antecedent stimuli important in operant conditioning?
It acts as a cue to perform a learned behavior.
How do secondary reinforcers become “reinforcers?”
You can use money to buy food.
How does negative reinforcement differ from positive reinforcement and punishment?
negative reinforcement removes or avoids a stimulus. (use umbrella = no more wet)
punishment happens (such as aversive punishment) after a response to make that response less likely to happen again
positive reinforcement strengthens a response.
both reinforcements strengthens a response, punishment weakens a response.
Explain how operant extinction, aversive punishment, and response cost differ.
operant extinction happens when you use to give reinforcement, but overtime effectiveness of the reinforcement fades if you stop doing it.
aversive punishment introduces a new stimuli like a smack.
response cost is a cost you impose on a response, such as taking away TV if kid acts up
Describe some disadvantages of using aversive punishment to control behavior.
aversive punishment can lead to the person liking a reinforcing change; ie. teacher gives more attention to kid because he’s a dick.
Define what is meant by the term “delay of gratification.”
being able to wait for something good to happen
What are some examples of discriminative stimuli in your own life?
the process of responding differently in the presence of different stimuli.
Describe four major schedules of partial reinforcement and their effects on behavior.
partial schedule: only some responses are reinforced.
fixed-ratio: reinforcement given after a certain number of responses
variable-ratio:
ratio
interval
